


Like Real People Do

by melonbug



Series: If This Be the End, Then So Shall it Be [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Immortality, M/M, space anthropology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-03
Updated: 2017-05-14
Packaged: 2018-10-27 13:20:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10809828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melonbug/pseuds/melonbug
Summary: What they did was important. Someone had to preserve what was left.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos to [oldmythologies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oldmythologies) for being my fantastic beta reader.

They were on a planet that Shiro was certain had once been beautiful. He sat on a lush embankment of blue-green grass, that flourished alongside a river as crystalline as the sky. On the far side of the river, though, Shiro could see the grays of char and ash.

It had been beautiful before the Galra.

Someone settled down next to him and Shiro grinned. “Matt,” he breathed and Matt smiled at him softly, reaching out to sweep Shiro’s hair from his face. Shiro reached up and caught a strand. He’d left it down because he enjoyed the way the wind swept through it.

“Hey,” Matt said. “You look comfortable.”

“I am.” He leaned against him, pressing their shoulders together, bumping his head against Matt’s. Matt laughed.

“Hey now, I need both my arms,” he told him, rolling his shoulder away. There was a pencil in his hand and his sketchbook was open on his lap. Spilled across the page were drawings of the flowers and the trees on the planet, all of them delicate and wondrous. Matt caught Shiro’s eyes on them and fell somber. “There’s no one left here anymore,” he supplied. They had discovered that on their arrival. “Someone has to preserve what’s left.”

 

Another planet had life: as many creatures as Earth had once had, but not nearly as many people. Shiro sat on the stairs of their ship, looking out across a rolling hillside. A brawling animal, the size of a buffalo, roamed past. “They’re called Kalten,” Matt told him.

Shiro blinked, startled, and looked his way. “You’re back.”

He nodded, looking out across the plains. They were lush and bronze, the grasses moving softly with the wind. “Yeah,” Matt said. “They’re interested in allying with us. Allura’s gonna send a ship out.”

Shiro nodded and the animal in the distance let out long, heavy noise.

“They’re endangered,” Matt said.

“Hmm?”

“The Kalten,” he explained. “The Galra liked their taste.”

“Endangered,” Shiro repeated, turning the word over in his mind. He met Matt’s eyes. “Like humans.”

Matt frowned and looked away. “Yeah, like us.”

Shiro shook his head and climbed to his feet. No, not like the two of them. Only like Matt. Shiro had stopped being human some time ago. “Are we leaving?”

Matt sighed. “Yeah, I suppose we are.”

 

Shiro never tired of seeing planet after planet with Matt. He never tired of being  _ around _ Matt, just the two of them.

 

Matt collected things from the planets they visited: rocks with peculiar shapes, flowers and plants pressed into books, samples of dirt kept in vials. Bits of broken pottery, from civilizations long dead. The skull of a long extinct species. He had books and books and books of notes, that described each of their stops in exhausting detail.

“Someone has to do it,” Matt said. “Someone has to make sure people  _ remember _ .”

 

“You haven’t been sleeping,” Shiro noted, looking at Matt where he sat on the floor, back to the wall. Their ship was small; Shiro could hear him up and about during the night cycle.

Matt looked up from his sketchbook and his eyes were heavy. The lines around them stood stark against the rest of his face. “I’ve just been thinking,” he murmured.

“About?”

Matt shrugged. “About the Garrison. About Earth.” he shifted and held out his sketchbook and Shiro took it, dropping down next to him. The drawing was rough: a building of some sort, with sharp lines and, in the distance, a creeping range of jagged cliffs.

“This is the Garrison?” Shiro asked, toying with the edge of the page. The lines were crisp to the last detail, the shading immaculate, as unfinished as the image was. It looked as if Matt had drawn it from an image, so good was his memory of the place. Matt had always had a keen memory. “I’m sorry I don’t remember it,” Shiro said at last, handing the book back over.

Matt smiled but it was forced. It hurt Shiro’s heart to see it, but there were things he couldn’t do for him. This was one of those things. “It’s alright."  


 

By the time they’d found him, tucked away as he had been in some pocket of the universe, he had become more astral plane than Shiro. He had been many things, across the span of his lifetime: Shiro, the prodigal pilot; Shiro, the Champion; Shiro, the paladin.

He was Shiro, made something unreal and not quite human by his years spent in the astral plane. He didn’t really know what he was, anymore.

Matt reached out and laced their fingers together.

“I remember you,” Shiro said. He’d never told Matt before, because of all the memories he had once had, the memory of Matt had been the hardest to parse. He  _ remembered _ Matt, where he remembered nothing else before. “You were the first person I saw, when I was brought back, and I knew who you were.”

“I remember,” Matt whispered. He smiled and it defined the wrinkles of his face.

 

He was somewhere else, again, when Matt dropped a hand onto his shoulder. He startled and opened his eyes and the backdrop of stars that had danced behind his eyelids bled away into the pink of the sky of the planet they were on.

Matt smiled down at him and helped him upright. “It’s Allura,” he said. He pressed a tablet into Shiro’s hands and he frowned down at it, blinking away spots. Allura looked back at him from the other end of the line. She was smiling, but she looked tired.

“Shiro!” she exclaimed, leaning towards the camera. “You look well.”

Shiro considered her words. Was he well? He felt like he was doing well, maybe. “So do you.”

Allura snorted. “Don’t lie, Shiro. I know I look a mess.” She laughed. She was different than Shiro remembered; her hair was short and messy, her eyes older. “Matt said as much.” Shiro shot Matt a look and the man shrugged. “But to the point, I’ve called with some news. Keith and Pidge have finally gotten in touch!”

_ Oh _ . Had it really been so long already? Shiro looked at Matt and he looked ecstatic. He also looked older, fine lines forming around his mouth when he smiled, laugh lines around his eyes. Time wasn’t treating him the way it treated the rest of them. Shiro looked away.

Allura was still talking excitedly. “They’ve been gone a while, of course. But they’ve finally set up communications in Earth’s sector.”

All of them fell silent at the mention of Earth.

“What’s the news of Earth?” Shiro asked at last. He didn’t remember Earth; it was easier for him to hear the reality of it.

Allura pressed her mouth into a tight line. “They’re coming home,” she said at last, in lieu of an answer. “They should be here sometime next month, maybe. They would like it if both of you were here to greet them, I am sure.”

Matt seemed to think it over, looking out over the horizon. The sky was awash in color, one of the most beautiful sights Shiro could have imagined. Stars bled through pinks and blues. “I think we should, yeah,” he agreed. He missed his sister, Shiro knew.

They caught up for a few minutes; Lance was doing well, but busy; Hunk was doing well, but also busy. They had a city to build, a galactic alliance to put together. The work Shiro and Matt were doing was only a small piece of that puzzle.

Allura cleared her throat after a bit, eyes flickering to Shiro. “Can I talk to Shiro? In private?” She asked softly. Matt looked his way and then nodded.

“Absolutely, let me just—” He dragged himself to his feet with a small groan, dropping a hand onto Shiro’s shoulder. “I’ll be inside,” he told him with a smile.

“He’s getting older,” Allura murmured when he was out of earshot. Shiro glanced back in time to see Matt disappear into the ship. His hair was going gray around the edges and it glinted in the sunlight.

Shiro swallowed the lump forming in his throat. “I know,” he whispered. “I know.” He was reminded everyday, as he watched Matt age while he, himself, grew no older. He never would.

Allura sighed, sweeping a hand through her hair. “I want you two to stay this time, when you come back,” she told him.

“You know he doesn’t want to,” Shiro said. “What we’re doing, what  _ he’s _ doing— It’s important.”

“I know, but— He’s getting older, Shiro.”

“I know,” Shiro breathed. “I  _ know _ .”


	2. I'll See You Again, or I Won't

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The world wasn't fair.

Because the world wasn’t fair, Matt died and he died young. Where Shiro was destined to outlive everyone, Matt had been destined for what could have been a reasonably long life by human standards. Instead, he died at what might have been forty. Time was weird in space; There was no way to be sure. But his hair had long since grayed around the temples and the lines of his face creased deeper with every smile.

Nothing in the history of the universe had ever been fair. This was the least fair of everything, Shiro thought.

They preserved him in cryo, somewhere where he could rest peacefully. And he  _ was  _ peaceful, his face graced with the smile that he had directed Shiro’s way in his dying moments.

He had gone fast; He had taken ill from something alien and deadly, but by the time they had noticed it was too late. He went from throaty laughs to heavy eyes, shaky hands, flushed and feverish cheeks. It had happened  _ so fast _ .

It wasn’t fair.

Just a month earlier Shiro had confided in Allura that he was considering solutions to Matt’s aging. Maybe the astral plane, where he and Matt could live out forever, hands linked. It wasn’t living, Allura had whispered, not really. And it wouldn’t have been fair to Matt. All he wanted was a life. He could never return to the life he’d had before the Galra, but he could still have a life. And he had had one, and almost every moment of it had been spent with Shiro.

He felt the weight of Matt’s choice, now, watching Pidge as she gazed up at the cryopod. Every moment with Shiro had been a moment without the rest of them. Pidge understood. Shiro knew she did, because she had made her own choices which kept her as much away as Matt’s did.

She reached out and caught his hand as he stepped up beside her, tangling her fingers with his. She didn’t cry. Shiro wasn’t surprised. Instead she stood rigid, head held high, eyes fixed hard on Matt’s face.

“He was happy,” she murmured, squeezing Shiro’s hand. “After everything, he was  _ happy _ .” She broke her gaze and glanced at Shiro. “He was happy with  _ you _ , and I’m glad.”

Shiro didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry.” His voice broke on the words.

Shiro had forever to mourn him. Pidge had it too. They’d always knew the time would come where everyone they loved would die. It had come too soon. Matt had been the first casualty of the curse they all bore.

The universe was a place of suffering and regret and  _ unfairness _ . None of them would ever escape it.

“Allura is looking at a way to break our connections with the Lions,” Pidge cut in.

Shiro tensed and looked at her, eyes wide. Something had provoked that, certainly.  _ Someone _ — “Who?” he choked out.

Keith was still all smiles and Pidge was happy enough, though she looked wrecked in an indescribable way at the death of the last of her living family. Hunk was— Hunk had what he needed, to keep him grounded long enough. And—

“Lance,” Pidge supplied. “He’s tired.” They all were, but they had forever to be tired and too much important work to do to stave it off. Pidge bit her lip. “I don’t know, though. I don’t think he’ll actually—” She swallowed and cast her eyes down to the ground. “He won’t, I’m certain. But he wants an out.”

“He wants to know he has that, at least, when he’s ready.”

“Yeah.”

Shiro considered it. Maybe there was a way out for him, too. Maybe he could leave, return to the astral plane. He was part of it now. Eternity would pass and he would not quite be lost to it as he had before.

“Are you going to stay this time?” Pidge asked.

He didn’t know the answer yet. Maybe he could go, continue Matt’s work. Maybe he could stay, spend the moments he had left with the others. Spend it with Allura.

“Maybe,” Shiro told her. “ _ Maybe _ .”

He was a lost soul floating through the world and through time. And now he was alone.

 

In another lifetime, in some parallel world that Shiro maybe had the power to tear into, Matt had joined him. Matt had stepped into the plane with him and had become spirit touched as Shiro was. And Matt had lived forever by his side.

But Shiro would never know. The moment had come and gone, and he would  _ never know _ .

**Author's Note:**

> Please check me out on [tumblr!](melonbugg.tumblr.com) I take VLD prompts! And I love to gush about my writing~


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